Saturday Excursion in Spain

When we were at the Africa/Europe Area Retreat in Spain, Saturday was our only free day. We could do what we wanted instead of go to meetings (the meetings were very good, but it's nice to do what you want to do instead on occasion, too). Mel and I chose to go on the trip to Seville, along with I think it was 5 bus-loads of others who also wanted to go.

It was great. Seville is a beautiful city, at least the parts that we saw. Here are a few photos:

I have no idea who these guys are, other than men who were also riding on the tour bus with us, one of those double decker buses you see with tourists snapping photos as they drive around historic cities, at least in Europe. It was a very nice tour, we enjoyed it a lot and saw most of the center of the beautiful old city. And the palm tree here is pretty cool, too. heh heh They told us that this is where Columbus unloaded all the gold he brought back from the New World, and maybe other ships unloaded here, too (I don't remember that part). I thought - wow! Part of the Americas used to be in there, and wow! I bet that place was heavily guarded, and many more wow! kind of thoughts. This may be really hard to see, but these are statues of the Spanish explorers who explored the New World.Several months ago on National Geographic we saw (with Russian voice-over) a program on this bridge. Mega-structures or something. Anyway, this bridge is not connected to the ground on the far side of the river, it is simply balanced somehow. You'd have to look it up to find out - it's very interesting, at least to me. I'd forgotten it was in Seville, but recognized it immediately when we saw it. It was built as part of an exhibition for the 1992 World Expo.Here are Mel and I later during our walk around the city, in a huge square in the old city center. This building was beautiful.As we walked around I looked down a side street and saw this church. Seville is knows for her ceramics and tiles. Beautiful. I'm going to upload a bunch of photos into my flicker account either later tonight or tomorrow evening with more of these kind of photos. I was very impressed with the beauty of the tiles everywhere.You can see the Arab influence in this historic building. I think it is incredibly beautiful. I want to live in there, only transported to the country side...We saw this sight while walking around. I'm not sure which was more impressive - the tiny door by Mel's legs or the spikes sticking 'into' his head.We walked all around the church on the left side of this photo. It is immense, and beautiful.

Sometime after leaving the area of the church, I fell. Mel, a friend and I were walking past a park, on a cobblestone street, when I didn't see the small curb and tripped right over it. It happened so fast - I was walking and then I was on my face on the also cobblestone sidewalk. The only clear memory I have is of while I was falling the panicked thought flashed through my mind - DON'T FALL ON YOUR KNEES! YOU'LL BREAK THE KNEE CAPS! And I didn't. I landed flat on my belly and arms, especially on my left elbow. I have been so afraid of falling - I've fallen 3 times here in Ukraine, always when we've been walking and I'm very tired and I don't see the dip in the sidewalk or like when I dislocated my shoulder, tripped over the 'threshold' to our building entrance. The doctor warned me not to put any weight on my knees - no kneeling, no resting on them, no falling on them - the kneecaps can break.

Other than the total humiliation of lying there, looking up close and personal at the cobblestones and feeling like a total idiot, I was very happy. I cannot express how happy I was. I didn't fall on my knees! I fell and didn't break my knees! Yippee! The fear that had been hanging over me was suddenly gone. I felt FREE.

Spanish people came running. I turned over, with help from Mel. I was kind of in shock, but people wanted to help me up and I am not a light little thing that can easily be helped up, especially when I can't bend my knees at a sharp angle or put any weight on them. Mel knows how to get me up and he is strong enough to do it easily (he is VERY strong). I kind of shushed people away and told our friend to let Mel do it. When I'm down on the floor, or in this case on the cobblestones, he stands in front of me, I brace my feet against his feet, put my hands in his hands and he pulls me up. Actually, while he's pulling me up, I'm also pulling me up. He's tall and strong and he can actually do it by himself without my help, if needed. Short people cannot do this very well.... :) :)

One young woman rattled away in Spanish and then switched to English. "You can wash your hands and arms off over there at the fountain in the park." It was a drinking fountain, so we walked over there and I did just that.

I looked at my belly and my nice white shirt had a big black mark on it where I'd kind of slid along the cobblestones. Both arms also had big black marks and one was bleeding. We washed off the dirt and blood. People stopped staring and walked away.

And we went to get some ice cream.
Because I really wanted some ice cream. :)

It was very hot in the afternoon and we were very tired from all the walking around (see - I was very tired again when I fell. It's from not seeing well and being too tired) and I think I was also a bit dehydrated. As I was sitting at a little outdoor cafe and our friend and Mel were getting our ice cream cones, I moved my left arm and boy did it hurt. It started to tingle all the way from my shoulder to my fingertips. I realized that I couldn't turn it all the way over, palm up. I had no strength in my hand at all, couldn't get a grip on anything, and my purse was suddenly too heavy to lift up on the table. Shoot - I could barely lift my hand up on the table. Mel returned with my ice cream cone and I said, "Mel, I think I've really hurt my arm." It took a bit for that to register with him, so much was going on around us. About that time, some of our Ukraine team members showed up, sat down and got some ice cream, too. I looked at Mel and our other friend and said, "I think I need to see a doctor." One of our Ukraine team members is a nurse and she agreed - I needed to see a doctor.

We walked back to the meeting place, a fountain near where we'd all gotten off the tourist buses and had agreed to meet by a certain time to catch buses home. On the way, I snapped a couple other photos. Here is one, isn't this a cool building? We slowly walked back to the fountain and met our contact person. We told him I needed to see a doctor. He called the Area Retreat doctor (a volunteer who comes from the States to attend to any medical needs during the retreat) and the doctor said I needed to get an x-ray, he couldn't tell how badly I was hurt over the phone, nor in person either without an x-ray.

About that time Sandy Fast and her husband showed up. They had just returned from taking another young man to the hospital. He'd broken his wrist the night before playing beach volleyball or something, and no one realized it was broken until the next morning. Sandy, who works at our home office, knows a lot of Spanish, so she'd gone with him and his parent(s) to have it x-rayed and treated at the hospital. Sandy said she and her husband would take Mel and me as soon as her husband came back from buying a cup of coffee.

Poor Sandy and her husband! They spent our whole "day off" at the hospital.

Mel, Sandy, her husband and I all got into a van they had rented and took off for the hospital. I recognized the building - we had passed it on the way into Seville. Sandy, Mel and I went in to the ER while her husband parked the car and then stayed in it, waiting.

The people at the front desk were very surprised to see Sandy. "What are you doing here again? Aren't you finished? Is there a problem?" and so forth. No - just another patient to see a doctor!

So, I got to experience the Spanish medical system, at least the Seville ER in a fairly new hospital. Actually, I was fairly impressed. You see - I've experienced the Ukrainian medical system!!!! The ER room was crowded, announcements were being made over the PA system all the time in Spain Spanish, which is different sounding than Mexican Spanish, people were in and out, sitting in wheelchairs (as was I), some with IV's, one woman way lying on a bed wheezing, people were chattering away. And there were lights! You could see! We weren't sitting in a dark hallway, with one window providing light waaaaaay down at the end of a very long corridor. It was clean and bright. I felt very confident that I was going to get good medical care.

And you know - I did. This is me, at the hospital before seeing the doctor, with Sandy Fast, who acted as my translator. Fortunately, the doctor (who looked like a high school student) knew a good bit of English due to the fact that she's visited her aunt in Seattle a couple times.This is me after I'd seen the doctor, after she'd "manipulated my arm" and read the x-rays and determined that she didn't think the elbow was broken, but maybe it was because I about passed out when she twisted my arm, but no one could find any break in the bone on the x-ray (1 Spanish, 2 American doctors). I was not feeling too good at this point.

We got back to the hotel about 4 or 5 hours after everyone else did. Just in time for a very late supper.

So, we went to Seville on our day off. We went on a big bus with a bunch of other people in our mission. We came back in a van, with 2 other people from our mission. We got a little lost on the way back to the hotel, somewhere in the vast expanse of Andalusia, but only a little lost and for a short period of time. It was kind of fun, except for being in the sling.

That is one place where the Spanish and the Ukrainians have the same idea - put your arm in a sling for 6 weeks and don't move your arm at all the whole time. No showers. No time outside the sling.

I wore the sling for 3 days. That was it. It was uncomfortable. I didn't like it. I took it off. When I told my doctor in the States that, he gave me one of 'those' looks and just gave a big sigh. :) :)

What The Doctor Recommended

While we were home both Mel and I went to our Primary Care Physician. Actually, I prefer to call him 'our doctor' because Primary Care Physician just sounds so ... so ... well, not the kind of person I would want to go see. I want to see 'my doctor'.

But that's beside the point.

The doctor basically gave us a clean bill of health, except for a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Both Mel and I have excellent cholesterol numbers, except both of us are a little low on the good cholesterol and need to get that number up so the ratio is better. It's kind of funny to me that they keep finding new things to be worried about. Used to be that you needed a cholesterol number lower than 200. Ours are both well below 200. Now you need to have specific numbers in your "good" cholesterol and your "bad" cholesterol. The ratio needs to be just right. Or you're going to die. Since I'm going to die some day anyway, I'm actually not too concerned about getting that ratio just right because it's very close anyway. However, I'm more concerned about Mel's because I don't want him to die. Is that weird thinking?

The doctor did tests on Mel's diabetes and the numbers came back. Mel is making adjustments to his overall treatment. We both have to kind of laugh, though, because his A1C came back too high and the doctor told him to increase his insulin such and such an amount. Worked great in the States - here in Ukraine he's had 3 sugar lows and had to go back to his old amounts instead. He exercises a lot more here by walking all over town trying to pay bills (see previous post). :)

The doctor also tested our c-reactive protein levels. Mel's came back wonderful. Mine came back too high. The doctor sent us a report with all the blood work stuff and recommendations, and beside my number there he wrote a big question mark, like he didn't think it was accurate. He also included a new prescription for me to go get my c-reactive protein tested again (our insurance won't cover it if it's done at his office, so we have to drive 40 miles away to have it done some place else, which is crazy in my opinion). I looked at the number and what the number was supposed to be to be healthy and thought to myself "Hmmm. I remember reading in the South Beach Diet that this number is very, very important for overall heart health. I'm going to look up what causes high c-reactive protein numbers and find out what I can do to make it better."

So I did.

And I found out that the number can be high after surgery or after an injury. It's normal to be high after surgery or after an injury, even. And a light bulb went on in my head - aha! I fell just a couple or three weeks ago and messed up my left arm! I bet that's what is causing the number to be too high! And I bet the doctor forgot that I'd fallen, even though he looked at the Spanish x-rays and agreed with me that it really wasn't broken.

The interesting thing to me is that the doctor also recommended right there in his own handwriting that I go on The South Beach Diet. :) :) My favorite diet. My favorite way of eating, actually.

So I did. As soon as we got back to Ukraine. It's almost impossible for me to eat that way when we are staying at my parents, but it's really easy here in Ukraine, at least in the summer. The only drawback - I don't like eggs and I'm not a huge meat eater and I really don't like taking all the time that's needed to prepare all the veggies. So, why is it my favorite way to eat? Hmmm - I don't know, but it is. Actually, if I'm not cooking for guests or a group, I really have to be in the mood to cook to want to cook at all. I'll just eat a peanut butter sandwich, or a cheese sandwich or something else that is made with lots of bread. Bread is my down fall. :( I love good bread. And potatoes made in any way, shape or form - I even like to crunch on them raw (altho some kid told me once when I was a kid that if you eat raw potatoes you'll get worms - I don't know if that's true or not, but I'd think it would have to do with how well you cleaned them. But I digress again.)

So, I didn't go get my c-reactive protein checked again. I should be back in his office in November and I'll do it then and hopefully I won't have had any recent injuries and definitely not any recent surgeries. But I have been eating South Beach. I've only lost a couple pounds, but I feel a lot better. I feel better because I'm not eating any sugar. When I eat sugar I hurt more from arthritis. There is a definite connection.

In fact, we'd been home ten days before I happened to notice that the only sugar we have in the house is about a cup worth in the sugar bowl. So, we bought a kilo weight plastic bag of sugar and I put it in it's big glass jar container with the blue plastic lid and stuck it back down on the bottom shelf where it belongs. I move it over now and again to get to something else, but I probably won't open the jar again until the next time I need to make cookies or a dessert for something - probably in September. Mel and I just don't normally eat any sugar at all.

I do, however, eat dark chocolate. I can't be left alone with a box of Roshen Assorti or I'll eat most of them. I do like those Roshen Assortis. So, Mel usually buys an 72% Nestle's Gold dark chocolate and we have a square or two every night. That's my sweet/dessert for the day. Chocolate is good for you, you know.

Why am I writing all this? Good question. I just ate my very late lunch of Egg Salad Burritos. I find that I like the eggs fixed this way. Two hard boiled eggs mashed and then whatever veggies you like to add, plus some mayo and pickle juice. I never fix them quite the same because I add different things depending on what I've got in the fridge. I use whatever kind of cabbage is available, too, because we don't get lettuce here (I don't like lettuce any more anyway - would rather use cabbage instead - wow! I've adapted to Ukraine in this instance :) :).)

This is what they look like:Just put the salad in a clean leaf, fold it in half, wrap the side down and around the salad and eat from the not-folded-down end so it doesn't spill out all over your shirt.

Good food!

I'll write more about the arm injury in another post - I promise!

Twisted Thinking

I woke up very early for me this morning. No idea why, but it happens now and again. It seems I either can't get to sleep right away at night, or I wake up after only 5 or 6 hours and can't go back to sleep again. Such is life.

So I got up and checked my email. Not much new there. Then I checked the blogs I read. Again, not much new there. And then I checked the news. About usual there - not a cheerful way to start the day.

However, this article caught my eye: Researchers Worry Navy Sonar Could Harm North Atlantic Right Whales.

I've posted before about my thinking on fetal ultrasound usage. I am against it, except in rare cases. I do believe there is a proper use for it, don't get me wrong. We just use it too much. Using it as a general diagnostic tool to diagnose pregnancy or during pregnancy really bothers me for a number of reasons.

The very first reason is that doctors look for reasons to abort babies, especially here in Ukraine. "Oh look! This ultrasound shows your baby has big problems. You need an abortion!" The fetus may or may not have problems, the doctor just wants the 'tissue' to sell for stem cell or other research. In the States - I have yet to understand why ultrasounds are so important other than trying to find something wrong so the imperfect baby can be aborted before it is born. Unless there is some indication that inutero surgery needs to be done, or indication that surgery is needed immediately after birth - why do doctors routinely bombard babies with high frequency sound waves? It may make the doctors job "easier" but what does it do to the baby?

The simple answer is - we do not know.

I know the medical community will argue that it is safe and no damage is being done. Look at all the millions of babies born "ok" after being bombarded by sound waves!

But this is not a natural thing. Man kind is discovering over and over that new technologies and things we thought were good and wonderful are really not so good and wonderful for us. Think striping all the nutrients out of wheat and making white flour - tastes wonderful, makes wonderful items to eat, but food manufacturers must add artificial vitamins and minerals back into the products to give them any nutritional value. White flour turns into sugar so much faster in the body, creating more problems for diabetics. White flour and white bread are wonderful - but they are not good for us in the long run.

How many medicines have been created and used for years and years before enough studies have come out proving that they cause side effects more dangerous than the original problem? Dozens, if not hundreds over the years!

And now modern man decides he knows better how to care for unborn babies and their mothers.

This was not much of an issue for me when I was pregnant. Ultrasounds were not used all the time, in fact, both of the doctors I went to never even suggested one. The first ultrasound I had was on a lump in my breast. I watched the monitor, listened to the doctor and technician and scheduled an appointment with an oncologist. I went to that appointment, was examined and then asked, "Why are you here?" "I'm here because of the lump in my breast." "What lump?" "Here...uh, well, there was a lump here and I had this ultrasound done and they said to see an oncologist and find out what is going on." "Oh. Well, there is nothing there now, maybe the ultrasound broke it up. That happens sometimes." (Not an exact quote of the conversation, but pretty close.)

I left that office praising God for taking away the lump (it was about the size of an almond). And not long after that I heard a woman talking about having an ultrasound done on her developing baby.

I am well aware that doctors say it is safe, that no damage is done to the fetus, that different frequencies are used (what did they use on my exploratory breast ultrasound? - it was just a regular ultrasound machine like they use for fetuses, nothing special used for breaking up kidney stones, etc.)

I think of the words of our dear "Ukrainian daughter" - I asked about the ultrasound she recently had, just wanting to know how it had gone (I've never talked to her about this, not ever). She was excited and pleased because she saw the baby for the first time. And then she said, "He didn't like the ultrasound, though. He started moving all over the place trying to get away from it."

So, we bombard our babies with ultrasound waves and think it's great and wonderful. And yet, scientists are worried about killing whales and other marine life by the use of sonar. I'm sorry if you disagree, but I think this is really twisted thinking.

I know that sonar uses different ranges of sound waves. I know that the navy believes it is safe for creatures that live in the sea. But some scientists disagree. There have been cases where whales have died when they have been near sonar, or become confused and end up damaging or killing themselves either by trying to get away from it or because they no longer function properly.

As humans we cry Save the Whales, and abort our babies by the thousands. As humans we see damage done by sound waves to marine creatures and try to get it stopped, while all the time using similar processes on our unborn babies and thinking nothing of it. What damage is being done, at the molecular or DNA level, that we know nothing about? We ASSUME it is safe because there is no immediate connection to something wrong. How many years did Marie Curie work with uranium, and then radium, before she developed cancer? (around 30) It took many years for people to realize that these elements were extremely dangerous, partly because they did not see immediate problems (Marie Curie carried test tubes around in her pocket and even "remark(ed)on the pretty blue-green light that the substances gave off in the dark." "Due to their levels of radioactivity, her papers from the 1890s (and even her cookbook) are considered too dangerous to handle. They are kept in lead-lined boxes; those who wish to consult them must wear protective clothing.").

Sound waves are fine for babies, dangerous for whales. Twisted thinking.

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
ultrasound
noun
1: very high frequency sound; used in ultrasonography
2: using the reflections of high-frequency sound waves to construct an image of a body organ (a sonogram); commonly used to observe fetal growth or study bodily organs [syn: {sonography}, {ultrasonography}]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
sonar
noun: a measuring instrument that sends out an acoustic pulse in water and measures distances in terms of the time for the echo of the pulse to return; sonar is an acronym for sound navigation ranging

Bits n Pieces

Beautiful blue skies this afternoon. Absolutely beautiful. That clear medium blue that indicates 'cold' and 'dry'. There were some white puffy clouds floating by, accenting that beautiful clear blue. Mel and I went to the store and I enjoyed just looking up as we walked. {happy sigh}

*~*~*~*~*~*
I read a short story by Louis L'Amour today while waiting for the laundry to finish washing. "The Sixth Shotgun" - a nice read, very Western. But it made me sad in a couple of ways.

First - I love Westerns, probably always will, but the older I get the more the violence bothers me. I love the code of the West, cowboys, the good guy wins, and so forth - but, well, there it is.

Second - America is no longer the place it was even 5 years ago. It makes me so sad to think that my grandchild will never know the West as I knew it growing up. Freedom unimagined in most places - lost now with a plethora of laws, taxes, people moving in, culture and attitudes changing so fast it is frightening. In many ways I'm glad my grandparents did not live to see this happen. I know that it is very stressful for my parents - they go so far as to refuse to watch the news any more, or even read the paper. It's just too much to handle.

Change is not always for the better.

*~*~*~*~*~*
Mel put on some Garth Brooks for me this morning while I was reading, just to make the ambience complete, I think. I've always liked a lot of his music, although I am so far behind the times that I have no clue what he's done, if anything, in the past 5 or 6 years. Same with Clint Black and others.

Such is life.

Again - I like the music, but sometimes (a LOT of times!) the words to the songs really bother me. Drunkeness, adultry, murder and so forth are accepted. I guess, though, from what I read about other forms of music nowadays, Country Western is pretty mild.

*~*~*~*~*~*
I guess I'm in a somewhat somber and reflective mood tonight. Thinking about how much the world has changed in such a short time. From what I've read about history, I don't think the world has ever changed this fast, so completely, everywhere at once, ever in before.

I remember being in Alaska and having the knowledge that I could be truly alone there. That was an intriguing thought. Now, even in the wilds of Alaska, or down in Antarctica, or the desert canyons of the American southwest - you can get a cell phone call, or connect to the internet. You can never be truly 'away from it all' any more. Now I realize that satelite coverage is not complete or totally dependable in every place on earth - but even so, there really is no place without technology possible with a bit of planning.

I remember being in Alaska and knowing how far away my family was. Phone calls were expensive and letters took a week or so to arrive. Now - I sit on my chair in the office room of our flat here in Ukraine and watch and listen to my grandson play in his livingroom half a world away, real time. He can't see or hear me - yet - because they are still on dial-up access and two way video cuts them off.

A hundred and 50 years ago, people left their homes in covered wagons and headed West and were often never heard of again. Now, I can talk to my family in the States as I ride the train across Ukraine - if I want to.

Is it really good for us to always be accessable to everyone?

*~*~*~*~*~*
Most of these kinds of advances are nice. Most of them. Then there are other advances.

Like the 'advances' of putting a computer chip in your child so you can make sure that if they are abducted, they can be found quickly. A computer chip, identification chip, in your child??

Advances like doctors here who advise women to abort perfectly healthy babies, telling them that there are major problems showing up on their ultra-sounds - because the doctor wants to sell the healthy tissue for stem cell research.

(As a side note while thinking of doctors and babies - I do NOT understand why doctors and women bombard their tiny developing babies with concentrated sound waves, sometimes several times over the course of a pregnancy! We wonder why there is so much Autism and Aspbergers, ADD and ADHD and other problems with our children now. How can anyone truly say it is "safe" to do that to developing babies? They thought it was safe to give babies oxygen when I was born and I, plus a host of other people in my age bracket, almost lost my sight due to that practice - it took time for the bad effects to show up. Yet - here in Ukraine it is not uncommon to have many ultra-sounds during a healthy pregnancy. I do not understand this practice at all. Why is it so important to see the unborn child in a normal, healthy pregnancy? Humanity made it all the way into the 1970s without every doctor needing to see every baby before it was born. Obviously this is one of my pet peeves. I thank God that my kids have 'clean genes' - no illegal drugs by either their mama or papa, and none of them underwent fetal sound wave bombardment. Good grief - what kind of genetic damage may be being done, all those little genes being developed in their correct order in the DNA, getting blasted by waves of sound, possbly damaged or misplaced - it could take years to discover the damage ...)

*~*~*~*~*~*
Wow. I guess I'm in a mood tonight.

Health "Care"

March 31, 2006

Mel is ill this morning. It started last night and it’s probably just a nasty little head cold, aggravated by spring allergies. Even so, it always worries me when he gets sick. I’m always concerned about his blood sugar levels going way out of whack. So far this morning, after a fever that broke in the night, he seems to be doing a lot better. His blood sugar was normal this morning, not high like it gets when he is really ill.

This is one area where I have had a hard time trusting God. It is strange – I trust God pretty well with our health while we are in the States. Or, at least I thought I was trusting God - maybe I am finding out that I was really trusting the American medical system! That’s more than a little scary!

The medical system here in Ukraine is an on-going nightmare to me. I hear the stories people tell and I remember our own experiences with it and I wonder how anyone has survived it to even tell their stories! Just yesterday one of the women in the Bible study was asking prayer for her nephew. He was badly burned in an accident at work, late at night. To get to the hospital HE had to call a taxi (I’m not sure of the details, but apparently the ambulance refused or wasn’t available?). The taxi driver took him to the hospital (everyone was amazed – the driver refused to take any money!). Then, to add another black eye to the medical profession (read – socialized medicine), when the burn began to itch a couple days later, the nephew asked the doctor if he should put an ointment on it, and the doctor replied: “you can do whatever you like. You can lick it if you want, or you can get a rock off the street and scratch it.” I have no doubt that this story is true. I’ve seen and heard too much, even from those in the medical field, to think that someone just made the story up.

I have had four “run ins” with the medical field myself. The “fun time” I had with the dentist is for another journal entry, as is the time I fell and dislocated my shoulder. But the other two are short enough I can put them into one entry.

I discovered a lump in my breast during our first three years here in Ukraine. I found out from friends in Kiev about the American Medical Center located there, so I made an appointment with the gynecologist to have an exam. I really liked this doctor and I would go back to her again at any time. After examining me, she determined that I needed a mammogram, so she made an appointment for me at a local hospital. In the States when I’ve had a mammogram, the office is staffed by women, the person who does the mammogram is a woman, and everything is nice and quiet and designed to put me at my ease. In Kiev, I sat on a flimsy theater style chair out in a busy, dimly lit hallway with a couple dozen other people, both men and women, waiting to be called into one of the side rooms. Once inside, I was instructed by a man to take my blouse and bra off – no private room with a little cupboard to put my belongings in, just take it off right there. Then, he and two other people, one of whom was a woman (yea!), did the exam. While I was stuck in the machine (a brand new Siemens mammogram machine!), I was treated to three or four Xeroxed comics taped right there before my eyes – comics of male anatomy being squashed in a mammogram machine. Very interesting. Afterward I was examined by one of the men, then shown the white spot/lump on the x-ray. He circled it with a black marker and gave the x-ray to me to take home. I was instructed to have a mammogram once a month from then on. When I protested that we don’t have them that often in the States, he looked at me and asked, very seriously, “Don’t you value your health?” I wanted to sit down and laugh hysterically and then burst into tears. Of course I value my health – that’s why I don’t have a mammogram once a month! I sent the x-ray to a gynecologist in the States and he determined the lump was nothing to be concerned about, I just needed to schedule a mammogram in another couple of years. When we were in the States the next time, my mammogram came up clear.

I guess our first three years in Ukraine were hard on our bodies. One day I woke up and after putting in my contacts I realized I had a funny line in my vision. I took the contacts out again and cleaned them, but the line was still there. I started getting scared. I have had bad eyesight since I was a little child. It has something to do with being born breech and then being given oxygen immediately after birth. Apparently the oxygen damaged my eyes and I am very nearsighted. My eyes have only grown worse over the years and I’ve always had a fear of eventually going blind. Back in the early 1990’s I had a new kind of surgery to repair a torn macula in the retina of my right eye. The surgery was successful, but my eyesight was permanently damaged by the tear and I have very little vision in that eye now. Well, this new line was in my left eye. It was a different thing than a tear in the retina – I’d had several small tears that required cryosurgery or laser repair, in addition to the more serious macula repair, and I was well aware of what those symptoms are. I started looking up information on the internet and did a self-diagnosis of “vitreous detachment.” The articles I read on that indicated that a tear in the retina could occur during a vitreous detachment, so I immediately called the American Medical Center for an examination.

After a long overnight train ride to Kiev and then a ride on the metro to the AMC, I was examined by a doctor. He determined that I needed to go to the special eye clinic in another district of Kiev. This clinic is the number one, top of the line, eye specialist clinic in all of Ukraine. It was a very interesting examination. After filling out some paper work with the help of someone from the AMC, Mel and I waited in a little room until called. Mel came with me – I did not want to go alone. I was taken into a very large room with several machines sitting around. The attendant took me to the first machine and my exam began. I can’t even begin to remember all of the machines and all of the tests they did. I do remember very well, though, one test that was done. They put something on my eye, a lens of some sort and I started to panic. My eye was actually stuck to that machine. It was all I could do to keep from trying to jerk away and start screaming in panic. I actually started making panic noises and hitting my hand on my leg and the person doing the exam told me to shut up and stop it. During the test for glaucoma, I asked the examiner if I had a vitreous detachment. The person had no clue what I was trying to ask. That was fun. How do describe something like that? I finally said something like, “Is there a problem with the ‘water’ in my eye?” I went into as much detail as I could trying to describe what I meant. No one could see anything wrong. But oh, everyone was VERY interested in my other eye! The right eye was examined very thoroughly. A couple people came over to look at it, to examine the results of the surgery I had had in that eye. I was asked to describe what my ophthalmologist in the States had done. No one was concerned with my left eye at all. I left the exam no wiser – did I have a vitreous detachment or not? All I knew was that my right eye was very interesting but that no one seemed to care at all that I had a problem in my left eye.

When we were home in the States one of my first appointments was with my ophthalmologist. He began the examination and the very first thing he said was, “Oh, I see you had a vitreous detachment! Let’s see if there was any damage to the retina.”